About Map Blue

Map Blue was written by Charlie and Joe Gunyon. It uses data
from the 2010 US Census combined with survey data from the
General Social Survey to predict likely political orientation
based on some very basic demographic information.

What does the map show?

You can configure the map to display the data in two ways.
The first (and default) way is to show the net Democratic votes
in each block compared to the block with the most net
Democratic votes. For example, if the map is displaying 2
blocks, block 1 has 10 Democratic votes and block 2 has 5
Democratic votes, block 2 will be half as opaque as block 1.
Of course, if there are more Republican votes than Democratic
votes, the block will be red.

The second way is to show percentages, i.e. this block is 90%
Democratic. This can be more useful as a rough overview, but
in general, the first method is much more useful.

Why the 2010 Census?

We use the 2010 Decennial Census because it contains
information down to the census block level. This level is very
high-resolution; any higher and we're talking individual
addresses.

There are some downsides to this approach. Because of the
scale of the Decennial Census, key demographic information,
like religion, income and education level, is left out.
Additionally, the data can be outdated.

We would like to use additional data sources (ACS data, SAVI,
etc.) to try and augment the data from the Decennial Census,
however, we lack the time and money to do so.

The site seems slow / The site is broken

Map Blue uses some moderately advanced web techniques that
require a modern browser. Your best bet is to use
Google Chrome.
Firefox will work, but tends to be slow.

You can speed things up by zooming in. The more blocks Map
Blue has to draw, the harder it has to work. For example,
zooming far out in urban areas might draw 50,000 census
blocks. That's a tall order.

We've considered drawing census block groups or tracts when
zoomed out past certain levels, and then using lower-resolution data
(like ACS data). But, again, we lack the time and money to
improve things past this point.